Monday, June 19, 2017

Yesterday public access to our Church and State website was denied five times. I have updated my blog post of 16 January with yesterday evening's 505th block on access to the site since 26 July 2016. This afternoon I have been stopped by Facebook from posting to groups without first passing through a time-consuming security check for every post I wish to make. This, as revealed below, is Facebook's 21st block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015; they themselves call it a block in the video above. Don Collins, President of the Washington, DC-based International Services Assistance Fund, writes: "Glad you compiled this odious record of mistaken blockage. What possesses the site? Surely after multiple postings they must know your content is neither lewd nor extreme." My appeal reads:

For the attention of Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Facebook

19 June 2017

Dear Facebook,

I wish to appeal your decision this afternoon to stop me from posting to groups without first passing through a time-consuming security check for every post I wish to make (called by Facebook a "block"), and this for an undisclosed period of time and without any stated reason.

Before this block, I had not posted to groups at all today; and yesterday, as always, I only posted to groups that are specific to an article's subject and that I am well familiar with. I have made a video of the security check I must pass through to post to groups; it can be viewed at http://tinypic.com/m/jq5c2p/1. In this video I am trying to post Prof. Paul Cliteur's New York Times article "Terror Has Already Led to Self-Restraint" to the closed group Sam Harris & The Future of Reason, of which I am a member. Prof. Cliteur is Professor of Jurisprudence, Leiden University (the Netherlands) and is one of our listed Authors.

Facebook has responded to only three of the 20 appeals listed above, citing "technical problems" in each instance. Don Collins, President of the Washington DC-based International Services Assistance Fund (and who is another one of our authors), writes: "Surely after multiple postings [Facebook] must know your content is neither lewd nor extreme." I only post to groups articles that I have already published on our Church and State website.

Please note that we currently have an international list of 121 Honorary Associates, including two Nobel prize winners. Since Facebook's 16th block last October, 91 distinguished academics and other intellectuals have given us permission to add their names to the list.

Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.

Yours faithfully,

Lola Heavey
Webmaster
Network for Church Monitoring

"Let me recommend an important web site - churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out." - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Draft paragraph 42 of Declan's next updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

42. On 13 August 2011, then Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone wrote to Facebook on the Applicant's behalf, asking that they explain why the Applicant's wife had been barred. The bar was subsequently lifted; however, since 1 December 2015, Facebook have blocked the Applicant's wife from posting to a pages and/or groups on 21 separate occasions, and up to six days at a time (each of these blocks is well accounted for in the N4CM blog). On 22 December 2015, Labour's Lyn Brown, then Shadow Home Office Minister and now Shadow Home Secretary, made an enquiry on the Applicant's behalf to Facebook UK Managing Director Steve Hatch asking if he could offer an explanation as to the terms and conditions the Applicant's wife was alleged to have broken twice previously. To the best of the Applicant's knowledge, Mr Hatch did not respond to this letter. The Applicant's wife only ever posts to groups that are specific to an article's subject and that she is well familiar with, and she only ever posts articles that she has already published on the Church and State website. Nonetheless, Facebook have responded to only three of the Applicant's wife's 21 appeals since 1 December 2015, citing "technical problems" in each instance.

UPDATE 19 August (10.16am): When it comes to stopping me from posting Church and State articles directly to pages and/or groups, Facebook's 21st block since 1 December 2015 was confined to 19 June (one day). There's no telling what's next from Facebook. This is my report to them on 24 July citing five other kinds of blocks since 5 April (the block against an excerpt from a book by Prof Paul Cliteur records as an unprecedented 18-day block against a single post):

For the attention of Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Facebook

24 July 2017

Dear Facebook,

I posted the following reply to your message in my Support Inbox (please find your message attached):

On 5 April I reported that the page listing all the groups I belong to was not working. With this rectified, I reported on 10 April that I couldn't schedule posts on my page. Then I reported on 12 April that my scheduled posts were not posting. On 6 June I reported that every time I posted to my page a link to an excerpt from a book by Pascal Bruckner, one of France's leading public intellectuals, it disappeared from the page as soon as it was posted. I was unable to post the excerpt from Dr. Bruckner's book to my page until 21 June (a 16-day block).

UPDATE 19 August (continued): We now have a distinguished list of 127 Honorary Associates from around the world, including two Nobel Prize winners. Since Facebook's 16th block against our Church and State website last October, 97 distinguished academics and other intellectuals (in April, 22 people) have given us permission to add their names to the list. Nonetheless, the blocks on public access to our Church and State website continue unabated. I have updated my blog post of 16 January with this morning's 669th block on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016. The blog post also not only reveals a record-breaking 52 such blocks in one week at the end of April (an unprecedented escalation that kicked off with our focus on Denmark's cartoon crisis; 74 blocks last month), but it reveals the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site which continues to this day. For example, as I point out in an earlier blog post about the almost certain loss of our employment contracts to the United States by Royal Mail (as opposed to the United States Postal Service), the second article below has 1/2 million Facebook likes/shares (not zero):

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

About me

I am a former psychologist from Madrid. My husband, Declan, is a former teacher from Dublin. We were forced to sleep rough on the streets of London for almost 4 years in total - from 4 November 2006 to 13 July 2009, and again from 14 April 2013 to 17 May 2014. We came to England in August 2003 from Ireland, and established Network for Church Monitoring in January 2011. We have no children.

Links

Network for Church Monitoring

The Church and State website at churchandstate.org.uk is an initiative of our London-based Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM), a non-profit, non-partisan company limited by guarantee (number 7496571). Registered Office: Suite 101, 254 Pentonville Road, London N1 9JY.

N4CM is dedicated to shifting the discussion about the importance of secular government back into the mainstream so as to find solutions for the great challenges of the 21st century. We are committed to women’s reproductive rights, immigration reform and the policies and programmes focused on a human rights approach to family planning and population stabilisation.

Participants in the Church and State website include 40 Nobel laureates (29 Signatories, 10 book excerpts and two Honorary Associates; the late Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve provided us with both his signature for our online petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and a book excerpt); eight members of the UK's House of Lords; and several hundred distinguished scholars from around the world.

Google Analytics says over 70% of our hits are from Americans.

'Let me recommend an important web site - churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty